The 1980s and early 2000s saw a wave of high-profile financial scandals and corporate failures around the world. This, coupled with the recent 2008 global financial crisis, placed corporate governance of the modern firm under greater and closer scrutiny, generating much academic and policy debate about the efficacy of corporate governance. Starting the early 1990s, many countries around the world published best practice corporate governance recommendations and/or governance regulatory laws, underpinned by the rationale that strong corporate governance supports sustainable value creation in firms via improvement in responsibility and accountability. Whilst there are many studies examining the efficacy of corporate governance in value creation, there are still gaps in knowledge requiring further research. This Special Issue of the Journal of Applied Accounting Research (JAAR), with the tile 'Accounting for value and governance', is an attempt to contribute to the continuing debate relating to corporate governance and value creation. It comprises a collection of six peer-reviewed papers that address a number issues on corporate governance and value creation, with particular focus on the role of corporate ownership and corporate governance quality, the issues relating to building confidence in the external audit function, and the voluntary disclosure of information about greenhouse gases and investments in intellectual capital assets. All these issues are important in the firm's sustainable value creation activities.